"To an extent, there's a lot more of it on the radio than there used to be, but there's still amazing underground dance music around.”

Has dance music become the new pop?:

“A dog. They seem to have a very nice life — a simple existence, they just do their thing.”

If you could be any animal, what would you be?:

“Never. It sums up the worst cynically manufactured cheesy over-emotional music made not because of a genuine feeling, but because four ghost writers and engineers in a room think they can make a fuck-load of money.”

Should DJs do "heart hands":

“If I thought it would make a real difference to the amount of drug casualties, then yes. I'm not sure it does.”

Do DJs have a duty to speak out about drugs?:

“If the non-fantasy one was always present and correct, that would be enough for me.”

Emery got married last year, and since then he's been living between Manchester and LA, basing himself in the UK when he was playing big festivals such as Creamfields, Global Gathering, SW4 and so on in the summer. He's moved away from trance the past year or two, and says that he's having the most successful time of his life. <

He didn't do a campaign for Top 100 votes this year, claiming that he was sickened by all the campaigning and effectively doing a kind of reverse campaign whereby he donated fifteen thousand pounds to charity. Many of his fans still voted for him anyway, but he's taken quite a tumble in the rankings. The set question about drugs has Gareth particularly animated.

“Having a generation of DJs, many who have done drugs in the past themselves, saying to the kids 'Don't do drugs' — I'm not sure that's going to have a positive effect,” he tells DJ Mag. “The response is likely to be like when a parent or teacher says 'Don't do drugs', which is like 'Fuck you, I'm gonna go and do them anyway'. I think DJs should speak out and say, 'If you are going to do it, do it sensibly'. DJs shouldn't say 'Just say no' — we've had 120 years of that, and it doesn't seem to have worked.”